


Triumph In A Minor

by Aminias



Category: Casino Royale - Fandom, Chiffack - Fandom, Hannibal - Fandom, James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall - Fandom, Tempo - Fandom
Genre: Chiffack, F/M, Gen, Hannibal/Madancy pairing!, Jack plays piano, Kinda, M/M, as in meow, bit of angst, bit of back story, bit of redemption, dash of gay, it is a cat, piano takes center stage, the cat - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-13 23:12:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7142108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aminias/pseuds/Aminias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their hands brush.  </p><p>Chiffre smiles with  just the tilt of his lips and an edge of fang eyes watching in intrigue.</p><p>And Jack?</p><p>Jack grins baring his teeth bright like the morning dawn and harsh as the rising sun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Triumph In A Minor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TigerPrawn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerPrawn/gifts).



> A big thanks to @desperatlyseekingcannibals on tumblr
> 
> &  
> @tartufibianchi (who played a role as an unknowing motivation )
> 
> Your swell and hopefully this fic is decent too. 
> 
> Chiffack all the way.
> 
> This work is actually rather personal , mistakes exist within it please feel free to point them out so I can get cracking on fixing them.

Triumph in A Minor

* * *

 

_ Jack at six is at home in the world. _

He takes his place on the right seat of the grand piano, his father, the left. Together, there is nothing they cannot do! They play until his mother comes home from work, tired, and sips a glass of wine watching in the doorway. The house is filled with smiles and it seems this equilibrium could never be broken. It’s a child's dream, all the more beautiful, for, at the time, he knows it to be the unshakeable  **truth** .

 

_ Jack at eight is a dulcet young thing. _

He’s simply a darling! A polite and gentry small dear. Jack is the fawn of his mother's social circle. They prowl around him in dazzling gowns of vibrant colors grins filled with jagged teeth, swiftly declaring his sweetness with his baleful gaze and brilliant little smile. Piano lessons he’s just started, three under his belt. A warm atmosphere accompanies the well-lit space and his mom murmurs encouragement. Excitement still fresh from learning a few notes has him rushing up to the piano with his father sporting a cheeky grin delighted to play. He never  noticed those whose countenances  **don’t** match his own.

 

_ Jack at eleven is a fleeting creature. _

His fingers are long and thin, stark as they dance along the keys to the appraisal of hollow faces and hollower hearts. Jack becomes someone who understands the whitewashed nature of such gatherings. The thorns hidden behind flowery words, and  silken comments. Requests to perform become fewer. For now, he has to deal with the something that wrenches in his chest every time he seats himself at the bench. The center of the bench. No longer to the right, father’s shoulder brushing him on the left. Those precious moments, long gone, are not yet lost as the room fills with melodious sound. The mummers  no longer shadow him, for his hands are faster on the keys, than any whispered condolence  **ever** could be.

_ Jack at fourteen is two parts naïve and one part realistic. _

His mom’s off who knows where working three jobs it seems, somehow still making time to sit down with him at night. Jack's long moved past basic arithmetic, and her areas of expertise lay elsewhere. Evidence left in the tightness around her eyes. Wrinkles encroach  on what were previously laugh lines. Age and something else thickening into dark crevices around her face. For all this she is still willful and elegant, pride shown in the tilt of her chin and disregard of old trappings. Her remembrance is selective. The grand piano sits shoved to the corner of the main room, the way Jack is these days. Sometimes, he will idly dust the surface until it shines sleek and new. While his mom is out, if he can bear  it, he plays. The lessons are not forgotten, merely placed aside. There are bills to  **pay** .

 

_ Jack at sixteen is no longer doe-eyed. _

This house is not a home and he shudders insides its walls. The yelling shakes the core of his fragile belief that just maybe the past could be restored. It’s foolish. Mother has brought home a new man. He knew it would happen abstractly, of course, eventually. He just hadn’t expected it now. He takes a seat at the chaise. Suddenly the absence and strangeness of the action settle over him.  _ Where is the piano _ ? He sweeps his gaze wildly around, already suspecting foul play. Mother’s smile is thin over brightly painted lips. The new promise in her face sweeps off the now broken oath she made before. She watches him her voice sharp and final waiting until understanding dawns across his features, watching as he glances unsparingly to the corner. 

“Oh, that old thing, darling I thought  it was for the best.” She takes his silence for acceptance of this fate and continues speaking. “Music shop on Main took it away. I’d best be off.” Like this the fragile peace between his mother and he is shaken down to the foundations. His vibrating hands clench  on his knees. He can still hear the quiet “click” of the door closing echoing off the barren walls. Her voice reverberates in his skull, mocking _ I thought.. _ his mind taunts.  _ You didn't think! You  _ **_never_ ** _ do! _  Jack wants to scream until his throat is raw. His breath comes in harsh, shallow pants. The open air ceiling looms closer, crowding  in on him. He has to leave this place!  It's leave or let the rage in him swell, blinding him beyond reason. It’s been building like a mad thing since the door closed  behind his mother not but moments ago. His eyes watch the door knob.  _ Any second now he is going to move. _ He just needs a minute to center himself. His vision blurs. The rafters slide closer the world spins. He  **never** manages to move.

 

_ Jack at twenty is a volatile being. _

The rage sinks under his skin His teeth clench muscles in his jaw aching so much he’s surprised they are not ground away to nothing. A bruise rests high on his brow, a variety of purple-yellows and blue,s  a sad excuse for modern art. The knuckles of his fist are red. Jack feels scraped raw. He  wonders if anyone else can see the open wound that he is right now. Every stranger's glance sears him down to the bone. There is nothing. He steals his first wallet. It’s a cinch a quick move of those slender fingers so deft at the keys, and the small leather bound thing is in his grasp. 

The night air becomes charged and he is  _ electrified _ ! He’s sure his face sports a mad grin, teeth slightly bared like a hyena pilfering a lazy  lion's kill. Jack’s heart dances beneath his chest. For the first time, he admires the world as it passes around him under the pale moonlight. The arch of streetlamps curving, magnificent wrought iron statues among daring skyscrapers. The apartment is empty save the alley cat that waits for him offering a plaintive meow in greeting. No other warm body occupies the space but his own. Early morning, he wakes covered in sweat choked around the blankets. He stumbles his way to the bathroom. He grips the seat of the toilet bowl wretches up cheap beer and cheaper canned soup. He doesn’t look in the mirror. He does not care.  _ It’s fine.  _ The wallet stares at him from its perch on the sink. The streets now hold hidden wonders like notes within a score, just waiting for Jack to coax them out. He is  **alive.**

_ Jack at twenty-five  is a weathered man. _

He’s given up pretending. The cat is his as much as one can own a cat. He feeds the plaintive thing and has set out for it a little water dish (with bright pink mittens decals) fitting in among the clutter of his place. Jack’s long since moved on to bigger and better things from his gray-washed apartment to a condo. Framed in by bookshelves, he places a new knick-knack on the third shelf smiling at each of the small spoils he’s collected along the way. It’s not like the police are going to case the place anyhow. There's a cop living in the building for Christs sake or at least  _ visiting _ Daisy, his neighbor, frequently enough to be. He’s mapped out the roads down to each crooked  street sign. Knows the edge of every pothole, which alleyways open to rooftops and which leave you caught. His crime isn’t; petty,  _ it’s freeing _ .  Keeping it at a low-level allows plenty of room to work. So many bitty fish want to be big instead of staying slight and quick. Jack isn’t one of them. He doesn’t give up on music; he composes to the roar of the crowd. The breath between heartbeats when your pulse drums loudly as your feet on the pavement. The drive has him in a near constant state of fervency. Adrenaline delivered via efforts not to get caught catapults him above the gaudy hope shown by this city drowned in neon. Then he hears the  **piano.**

_ Jack at  _ _ twenty five- _ _ (he’s stopped counting) _

He finds that music on the streets isn’t the same. The feel of money in his hand is no substitute for how perfectly the keys curved and arched like a lover under his fingers. Men, women, people;  doesn't matter. He only has that blasted cat and the piano for company. 

Even now he can hear the opening of Moonlight Sinatra being played in a classic showman style.  It can’t be a dream, he knows this.  _ His father wouldn’t play something so pretentious.  _

_ There it is! _ The eerie tune flies in,  rattling around his head leaving no room for sleep. Jack's up slipping on his shoes. He’s tugging his well worn jacket off the hook and sliding his arms into the proper holes. It only takes two tries. Jack’s out the door and down the hall, tripping over stairs in his hasty exit. His feet hit the pavement and he’s full tilt from there.  _ He is flying now _ , racing as fast as the beat of the heart in his chest towards the sound! Jack has to find it. Has to know. What? He’s not sure. Then he is  _ there _ . Just outside a corner cafe a little hole in the wall place. The door is propped open, bathing the surroundings with a warm glow. Sound varied and deep like that of the Black Forest in Germany fills the space trickling out into the open city. 

He stands in the doorway for an age, not daring to move beyond the stoop. The figure crouched over the instrument inclins his head slightly  in Jack’s general direction. He feels almost foolish. 

It must be nearly three am, and he realizes only now that his shirt is filled with holes and his reflection in this shop window reveals his hair to be as turbulent as the seven seas. 

He looks haphazard at best, sleep deprived and half mad at worst. 

Jack shuffles his feet frayed sneakers nudging at the ornate door frame then gingerly  he steps inside.

The immaculacy of the man playing across from him is hard to miss. His wealth is not an overbearing thing, rather a subtle richness. His shirt is deep navy (clearly tailored to the trained eye), showing off the man's sharp shoulders,the kind that alludes to muscles which  ripple as he bends over the keys. Fitted dress pants and a sleek suit jacket lays folded over a nearby chair. Jack’s sure the man's wearing oxford dress shoes, no less. The divide between them is as vast as the Grand Canyon that Jack isn't sure he is willing to ford, no matter how able. He spares Jack one look with an arched brow, a dare. Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly. The card he takes out of his coat reads Le Chiffre, and he extends it like rope to a drowning man. Jack has eyes only for the piano- a large ostentatious beauty, haughty in matte black.   Jack  cannot deny his past any longer.  He has a choice, a chance to alter everything. This will not be his ninth symphony. The only other  pause in playing occurs when the man's right-hand  lingers over the empty seat  space beside him, gently patting it. 

He is like a man possessed as his feet once more move without urging to the seat of the piano.

Jack sits. For a moment hands hover over the keys just shy of touching. He’s twelve again staring at the sheets of music frozen alone. Then he is not alone, for Le Chiffre is a solid weight beside him to his left. The heat of his shoulders the press of his body ground Jack. 

_ What sort of music will they create together? _

He can already hear the swell of sound that is  both their styles entwining together. Something wild, a natural cycle, primal, ghostly in the way wolves haunt deer’s every  step.

Their hands brush.  

Chiffre smiles with  just the tilt of his lips and an edge of fang eyes watching in intrigue.

And Jack? 

Jack grins baring his teeth bright like the morning dawn and harsh as the rising sun. 

The piano purrs beneath him as each note soars hurtling toward a final crescendo.

Triumph unfurling itself in the tune of A minor.  

_ Jack is at  _ **_home_ ** _ in the world again. _

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am Aminias  
> , @till-proven-guilty on tumblr come talk (seriously I'm SUPER LONELY I mean chill ) about the boys with me or drop prompts in my box anything really.


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